Everything starts with a thought … I thought/dreamed/imagined being on the World Stage in natural bodybuilding 10 years before it became reality.Belief in God and belief in myself helped me twice rank in the Top 5 in the world in my chosen sport.No belief, nothing!With your thoughts and energy channelled in the direction of your goal, don’t underestimate what you can achieve in ten years.Vv.

We are told that mankind is living longer than ever before in our modern history. The question I like to ask is how much of this ‘extended life expectancy’ gives more joy, better quality of life? Or is it fuelled by the ever-increasing reliance on the many drug stores opening up around the place selling and hooking people on to the scores of products that are supposed to help people. Supposed to help people eliminate ailments such as stomach aches, relieve heart burn, stop diarrhoea, cure headaches, lose weight, overcome skin problems, bad breath, hypertension and fatigue. You name it – there is a drug that will ‘fix’ the problem.

Is this what the human race has evolved to? Is this how far we have come as a race, even after all the scientific and medical progress that has been made in the last fifty years? I wonder, sometimes, how we came to be the way we are now? When I take a long hard look around, I am not impressed. I heard on the news or radio recently, that for the first time in mankind’s history, the current younger generations are more likely to die before their parents do. This is very sad if you asked me.

Statistically, children – yours maybe, will not live to the age of their parents (you) will likely live, simply because of their inactive lifestyles and poor eating habits.

Here’s what I have learned after close to twenty five years of training and living a lifestyle of a natural bodybuilder: Good health and good intellect are the two greatest blessing in life. If you are born with health, as most of us have, you have one of the most important life-enhancing traits within you – HOPE! If you have hope, you have everything and you can quote me on this.

Without health, where is the joy in life, I ask you? I have found that maybe due to the pressures of ‘the way things have always been done in the past’, everyone is forced in to doing things that they have been brainwashed to thinking they should do. People work very hard in whatever profession they find themselves in and try to know everything there is to know about the subject. They become ‘experts’ in their area of expertise. All for the purpose of making money, commonly making the mistake of thinking money is everything – the be-all and end-all!

Many strive to be experts at everything else external, and yet are not experts at the most important thing: themselves.

This is where I beg to differ on all levels – from the philosophical all the way to the practical. Money and the hunger for more and more of it at the expense of everything else is very unhealthy and leads to unwanted disaster, sooner or later. Unfortunately, many do just this to satisfy the insatiable desire to acquire valuables they have been brainwashed into thinking by marketers, they should get because it adds to them as a status symbol.

Remember this: there is no wealth like health. Your health and fitness are way more important. Wealth cannot buy health. Wealth without health is a mockery. The healthy labourer in my opinion is better than a sick millionaire.

But you can, you have a choice to do something about it. Not tomorrow, today – now!

Why? Because your life is the most valuable thing given to you. When you make the decision to prioritise YOU and your life, you have a change of thought. Everything begins with a thought. When you make that decision to help YOU and don’t take life for granted, you choose your health. And when you have health, you have that most elusive thing of life, that intangible thing that some people have, that thing that is the essence of life: vitality.

I think it was Samuel Johnson, the English literary genius that said –

“To preserve health, is a moral and religious duty, for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can longer be useful when not well.”

Great words. So true. Have you questioned how moral you have been to YOU?

I don’t care how old you are, it does not matter. Whether you are man or woman, tall or short, fat or thin, young or not so young, my advice from my heart, is I hope you generate the DESIRE TO CHANGE YOUR MIND – TODAY! Change your mind to help that person you see in the mirror, help him or her move towards the healthier, fitter person you imagine yourself to be.

Implant that desire with a thought, a thought to help the most important person in the world to you: YOU!

Look around us, it is estimated that all the knowledge accumulated in the 20,000 years to 2003 is doubled every two days since then. Information, technology and knowledge has increased exponentially and the combination of exercise/weight training and good nutrition is better understood than ever before. But why is the world suffering from an obesity epidemic? Well, I feel that, sadly, millions and millions of people are still not following a sensible path to ensure lifelong health and fitness.

People are creatures of habit and unfortunately it is more difficult to lose a ‘less-than-ideal (bad)’ habit then it is to adopt a good one. So much energy and effort is put in to hanging on to and justifying the need to retain a bad habit(s). If all that energy was transmuted in to focusing on and taking up good habit(s), we would have less preventable problems in the world.

Unfortunately, human beings are more reactive then proactive.

Why are millions not making the right choices given the knowledge and information available to them? A strong contributor is the increasing need for newer and modern technology and its use. These newer platforms of social media – facebook, twitter, text messaging, video games, increasing use of apps, all have one thing in common: they all encourage physical inactivity.

When I was growing up, I remember spending most of my waking hours after school with friends in the neighbourhood. We were always expanding physical energy with different games out on the streets.

Here’s another truth: what you eat today will be walking and talking on you tomorrow!

We’re all getting older by the second, yes, but some depreciate faster than others, mainly because of lifestyle choices. Today you may be relatively young but youth is always fading.

There are no guarantees in life, but if we choose well (health and fitness), we can live our days with healthy activities to get us near to perfect health, fitness and physique as possible.

If you have read this far, then it tells me that you are serious about making a change in your lifestyle. What I have always cared about with everyone that I have ever helped over the last two decades is their current physical condition and state of mind. This is exactly what I am concerned about with you, today.

To begin your change, your journey, you need to desire to change your mind as everything begins with a thought. But effort alone is not enough, you also need to dream, you need to liven up your imagination and set yourself some goals. What is a goal anyway? It is a dream with a deadline.

You need to sit back and take a few minutes out of your busy day and ask yourself if you’re worth it? Do you believe that your life is valuable enough so that the rest of your life (from this point on) could indeed be the best years. Can you picture, imagine your remaining days? Maybe you’re so busy in your daily life, you haven’t given it much thought.

One thing I have always been fascinated about is life but in particular – people. I am a watcher of people, always have been and always will observe others with burning curiosity.

Now, you may be asking yourself, okay Paul, where do I begin?

Well, you need to take stock of the most important thing you will rely on: your state of mind, in particular – your motivation. Being motivated is a wonderful gift and a lack of motivation is a hard nut to crack, so to speak!

Here’s what I tell most, if not all that have ever come to me for help: Find a quiet moment in a private room in your home that has a full length mirror. Lock the door and take all your clothes off. That’s right, everything. Now, just look at the image of you reflecting out of that full length mirror. Just stand there and don’t do anything but look. Absorb your full glory for 30 seconds. Don’t flex your arms or smile. Don’t even think about sucking in that gut. Relax that tummy and now….turn to the side. No sucking in, let it all hang out! Now, what do you see?

This is the REAL YOU! Happy?!

Need more motivation? Angry? Now, you have all the motivation you need. How could you let this happen to your body? You were born with the greatest gift of all: physical health.

Now, ask yourself this question: do you value YOU, do you value your life? Are you going to continue as you have to this point? Clogging your arteries, adding layers of fat to every part of your body, risking ill-health, aches and pains and an early grave – increasing your overall life risk?

Or … are you going to choose great health and fitness for the rest of your life?

Everything begins with a thought and where you end up in life, begins and ends in your thought.

Watch your thoughts. Choose well, my friend.

It’s your life, after all and the rest of your best years of your life depends on this choice.

If you are a regular reader of my messages, you will notice that I think a lot about life and I am constantly asking a lot of questions from life. I admit, I am a student of life.

My years of interacting with thousands of people in gyms, including seven years when I owned my own gym, I have learned a lot about life from other people’s experiences(OPE’s) and stories.

A question I have always asked is what does it mean to live your life, in particular – to live a life of significance? I feel that this is one of the most important aspects of a life well lived. What do you think? I think if I remember correctly, it was the writer Henry Thoreau that said something to the effect that he was afraid of coming to the end of life and finding that he had NOT LIVED.

I think Henry meant, coming to the end of your life and realising that you have not lived a life of significance. That was a genuine fear of his. Now, I am tempted to say that I am not genuinely afraid about anything – but that is not true. One of my main fears is insignificance. I am afraid, to put it simply, of living a life that does not matter. I admit I am afraid of leaving the world exactly as I entered and found it, no different for my having been here.

To not live a life of significance.

What about you? Is this one of your fears? Have you had a chance to think about this question in your journey through life so far?

From my observations of life so far, I have noticed that a lot of people think that “having lived” means experiencing a lot of adventures or a lot of fun and experiences or indeed – acquiring a lot of money. I think otherwise. I think these peoples’ perception of what it means to ‘have lived’ is slightly distorted and are missing the true significance of what it entails in my eyes.

Help people get what they want using your unique strengths and blessings.Vv.

Along with spending about eight years in my early youth as a Catholic altar boy, assisting priests in church masses and bible readings, I’ve spent countless hours of listening to hundreds of stories through OPE’s, and am also a keen observer of life. I believe, this common modern-day definition of living has nothing to do with ‘having lived.’ The usual things people seek to guarantee importance in their lives – typically money, fame, power – just don’t last.

Money, fame and power don’t work very well and yet, generation after generation are still blinded and brainwashed to believe that they are the answer. History is littered with countless examples that it is a lie, short-term and inauthentic.

These false drivers – money, fame and power all come to an end. Often, during the person’s own life, and certainly thereafter.

“So, how do you live a life of significance?” you may be thinking.

Instead of the individual’s endless pursuit of more money, fame and power, I believe living a life of significance comes with filling your life with things that last forever.

“And what are these things that last forever?” you may now be asking.

Well, these things that last forever are essentially VALUES. Yep, values! And what is the greatest value of all? Love!Put simply, you need to fill your life with love and lots of it! Love casts out all fears.

What is love? At this stage in your life, you would highly likely have some idea of what it is. Well, one definition is that it is an emotional attachment to the good things of life. So, fall in love with traits such as honesty, integrity, justice, goodwill, forgiveness, truth, grace and yes – success.

I think ultimately, you continue tolive in hope– in the joyous expectancy of the best, and invariably the best will come to you. Through God’s blessing.

It follows that to live a life of significance, you need to fill your life as much as possible with these values, attitudes and actions. So, start with trying to make someone else’s life a little better, using the God-given talents and strengths you have been given. This is a great start to significant living, as you have done something that lasts forever – in that person’s (his or her) heart.

Something that is eternal. A gift from you.

That impact you had on that individual or individuals is eternal because people are the only part of this world that will last forever …

Brad seeked; Brad asked the right questions; Brad knocked on the doors of opportunity towards the person he imagined himself to be.With my guidance

As we are constantly reminded daily by media, today’s modern world is filled with many threats – many imagined, some real – threats to our sense of security and safety. Today, more than ever before, you need to be in the right relationship with God. This is the ultimate security, the only true safety as he is the beginning and the end – God, as you know is the perfect giver of love.

If you are a Christian you will believe that God was there before the beginning and he has no end. He has known our fears and sufferings.

Life plays no favourites. God is life, and this life-principle is flowing through you at this moment, as you read and think upon these words. Believe that through him, you will be set free…. to live a life of significance.

Before I go, remember that you owe nothing to anyone in this world except love. In it’s simplest form, love is basically wishing for everyone what you wish for yourself – health, happiness and success (in that order) and all the blessings of life.

What is your answer to this question? The great motivational thinker and speaker – Earl Nightingale said that –

“we become what we think about most of the time.”

What do you think, is there an element of truth in that statement? Well, what do you think about, most of the time?

If you don’t have an answer to that question, that’s ok, it probably changes every day. What’s important is not that you have an answer, no, what’s important is that you RESOLVE to desire and seek solutions by asking the right questions.

What is important as far as your success is concerned is that you have the desire to want change for the better. To resolve is the first step towards the successful achievement of any worthwhile goal.

You need insatiable desire to win and genuinely be unsatisfied with the status quo. You need to have courage to keep those desires burning and keep fanning those flames, despite the many failures you have had in the past. You need to keep thinking those thoughts that will get you there, every step of the way. This applies to all areas of life.

Your desire, your window to your soul should yell out to the world that you want something special for you – in spite of your past failures. In spite of your blood line or home life. You simply need the desire to win! Better still, if you could … travel into the future, what would your legacy look like? The quality of life in your family tree for generations to come will hinge on the choices you make with your family today.

This is why I have always believed that one man/woman can make a difference. A difference that will be magnified over time.

Striving towards the best version of you is a very worthwhile goal.Desire. Seek. Get.Vv.

I hate to use the word ‘motivation’ because it is one of the most mis-used terms in the modern language. It is over-franchised, exaggerated, over-promoted and greatly mis-understood. People have asked me countless times over the years how I motivate people that I help.

I usually reply by saying that I don’t do that – that I don’t motivate people. The motivation comes from with each person. I just provide a vehicle (my unique framework to body re-engineering) to help them achieve their goals more efficiently, effectively and safely.

You see, everything you do (which stem from the thoughts you have), everything we all do, whether positive or negative, intentional or unintentional is the direct result of motivation. So, you need to be careful what you think, every day.

Motivation comes from ‘within’. It is a force, a burst of energy that moves us to action and is not external, it springs from inside you.

You need to summon great motivation to keep on your path, despite past failures, doubts and naysayers. Remember, history is littered with many greats that turned past failures in to successes, for example, the great Winston Churchill was a very poor student but look at what a great leader and speaker of men he became.

Psychology tells us that you can only really be motivated by two things:

Desire

Fear

They are poles apart. The first is positive and the second is negative and lead to opposite destinies as fear looks at life through the prism of the past and desire looks to the future.

Viewing life through the lens of desire, you are less likely to look at risks as restrictive. You will see risk as opportunity and will not fear the penalty of failure. This is because your dominant thought, the thoughts you think about mostly, is to be better and you desire better.

To win.

I’ve always believed fear should never be used as a reason for quitting; it is only an excuse! Most importantly, from my experience and from my observations of other people’s experiences, you should never be afraid, to be afraid.

Experience the emotion (being afraid), summon the courage and do what you are supposed to do anyway, that will help you realise your desire, your goal.

Another thing I have learned is that if you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. The opportunity may slip from under your nose – seize it while you can. Mountains may never be climbed, seas un-chartered nor happiness ever achieved if you waited for everything to be ‘just right’.

Ultimately, when the going gets tough…. The tough gets going as the saying goes. Never quit on life but most importantly, challenge yourself and strive to ‘win over yourself’ when the going gets tough. Like I sometimes remind my clients – “when it gets harder, you get tougher!”

Side Triceps.

Please don’t confuse what I am talking about with the seemingly insatiable desire in many parts of modern society that seem to associate drive, motivation and initiative only with materialism and materialistic power and gain. No, far from it.

What I am talking about is simply ‘personal achievement’ and the honest pursuit of individual excellence. This desire comes with the help from above, from God. My family includes in our daily prayer, the request to God to help us, help ourselves be the best we can individually be – for ourselves, first, and then for everyone else.

Putting aside any thought of material gain for a second, there is a certain pure personal pleasure that only comes with achieving the difficult. To do this, history has shown us that all winners have a very high level of motivation. Just like any other skill, this is something that can be learned and made in to habit, with effort.

So, eliminate doubt. Success is not reserved only for the talented. Talent is over-rated. Don’t think success is only reserved for those with high I.Q or for the rich and famous. It is not even in the best equipment, not even in ability.

Ultimately, success comes down to you and your thoughts and what you think about every day. You become what you think about mostly, as Earl Nightingale said many, many years ago.

You have one life and you have one important choice – to build your life around desire rather than fear. So, choose well, my friend. Like I alluded to earlier, out of desire comes the most important driver and that is ‘energy’. This to me, is part of my overall philosophy of life and that is Life is about energy management.The extra energy to make an extra effort, to ‘go the extra mile’ is a vital key to success.

It is through the increased energy for your desire that you keep the drive and motivation, focus and persistence. It is through the extra energy that you develop ‘grit’.

You find that energy by looking within with God’s help or your spiritual side, not without.

So, there is no time to waste, make haste and make big plans, not little ones. There is magic in your thinking. In particular, there is magic in thinking big.

World Natural Bodybuilding Championships. Dreaming big and thinking big helped me twice represent Australia against the best natural bodybuilders in the world at that time.Side Chest pose.Placing: 4th.

back double bicepsIn the thick of competition.Placing: 2nd Asia-Pacific Championships.

The most important lesson I have learned in my life so far in the spiritual realm is that God is so gracious that he accepts me, my failures, my personality quirks, my irritants, all my faults and all – unconditionally.

Apart from my beautiful wife, he knows me better than anyone else in the world. For most of you reading this, you would probably be a high-achiever in your life and still probably striving for excellence in all areas in your life. Reaching for what you imagine yourself as being perfect, while knowing and accepting that this is an impossible ideal, you keep striving for it anyway.

Simply because that’s how you’ve always been. Very competitive. Worked hard. Studied hard. But, if you’re anything like me, deep down in the dark recesses of your mind, there is a voice that is telling you that ‘you’re always be a failure’ when it comes to being ‘perfect’.

What gives me solace is the thought that God’s love and grace is unconditional. God will love me anyway, no matter how many times I tried and failed. Knowing this quietens my mind. It fills me with a great sense of peace, calm and security in this ever-changing modern world.

In this constantly evolving and changing modern world, I trust that God’s love for me is un-changing, like a rock! Unconditional. With this belief and faith, nothing is impossible because no matter what happens, no matter what hurdles you face, whatever the outcome, you know that God’s grace and love is with you – unconditionally.

It is the absence of unconditional love in this world that is one of the main contributors to the prevalence of poor self-image among men and women, boys and girls. Very sad indeed. It seems that despite there being more people to communicate with, there are more people who are lonelier than ever.

But, I reach out to you in this message that if you have this faith in God about his unconditional love for you, then, follow your dreams and make a plan to build your bridge towards it. Know that God will meet you half way on that bridge and help you get there, if that is what he means you to achieve.

Stop listening to all those voices telling you since you were a kid what you can’t do and start believing and realizing that you can do more than you ever thought you could do.

With the belief and faith of God’s unconditional love, let nothing hold you back on whatever dreams you wish to realise. Pursue your dreams with the hunger of a starving tiger. Know that you are a part of man-kind and have been designed in the image of God.

This image is designed for accomplishment and is built for success. Believe in belief itself. Believe in your belief in God’s unconditional love for you. Believe too, that all that you ever needed to succeed lies within.

For me, it has always meant a lot, it meant and still means everything. It means a celebration of a birth, a life, a saviour of the world of one of the most influential person that has ever walked this earth.

Does Christmas mean everything to you too? What does it mean to you?

Or is it just about getting together with friends and families and drinking, eating and merry-making? Or is it about present giving and Santa Claus? There’s a few sitting under our Christmas tree. Or is it about being alone? What does Christmas mean to you?

It is a time of blessed relief and imagining and believing all of God’s promises manifest itself in to that one person – Jesus Christ.

Amongst all the chaos and loudness and joyousness of the Christmas period, take a moment or two if you can to try and imagine what it was like for this little baby that was born in to poverty. This little baby that we all believe was and is the saviour of the world.

A little baby called Jesus.

Imagine what the conditions were like during the time of his birth. There might have only been one candle inside the stable. Today, Christmas, like Diwali in the hindu calendar is a celebration of light and you don’t need to look very hard to see it before your eyes in your own neighbourhood – beautifully designed lighting on houses and buildings.

Many people today associate Christmas being filled with the ones you love with lots of noise and laughter. Wonderful version of the truth.

When Jesus was born, I imagine the place located on a hill outside Jerusalem would have wreaked with loneliness. So, for those of you that may feel a sense of loneliness during this time and in particular, on Christmas day don’t be. You’re not alone, you have good company. Jesus too was very lonely at birth.

Jesus’s birth certainly wasn’t in luxury. You could imagine the toughness and roughness of the trough that he laid in. The trough or what was a similar to a modern-day baby cot, he felt at birth may have been as cruel a place as the cross he felt at his death. The end was like the beginning for Jesus. What will your end be like?

What about his first gasp for air? What about his first few cries, what would they have been like to welcome in to this world? I imagine that his infant cries we may have heard coming from stable may have been no less desperate and heart-piercing than his final cry on the cross. I wonder if some of the shouts and yells on Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations this year will be for the pain our saviour cried out over during his arrival and departure from this world. Our world, the world he came to save.

A variation of the ‘back single biceps” pose … on the beach.The combination of chaos + order = Life.

So, what is Christmas to you?

Celebrate? You say. Yes, of course, I say. Celebrate and be merry!

But if you have a little time, try to … imagine and … project yourself back to that lonely stable and try to imagine celebrating, most heartily with food and wine and dance amidst the stench of the stable. Do you know what that dung-like smell that existed in that little stable could represent today? It could represent the refuse of the world – the ugliness, the hatred, the selfishness, the rubbish.

And when you hope for a better New Year, try imagining celebrating at the foot of that painful cross. And why do I leave you with that ghastly image – not to sound negative, but to point out that that image of us at the foot of that cross is the one and only thing that really keeps that ‘life force’ lit in you for yet another day.

Do you know what that life force is? It is that image that epitomises the whole foundation of Christianity and the whole reason we have Christmas. That image of us Christians at the foot of his cross is the ending and the beginning. It is our belief – our hope.It is the essence of what it means to be a Christian. The unwavering belief and hope that that little baby boy born in to poverty and rejected by many, died for all our sins.

Hope – that is all that we are and all that we will ever truly have within us for as long as we are alive.

Christmas for Christians is the celebration of the saviour of the world! Believe. Really believe. There is a passage that has always stayed with me since my youth:

Me and my children – carriers of my genes. A taste of immortality for me.

My children are learning about life at a very high rate. There’s not one day that passes that I don’t hear them say or try something new. I am constantly surprised and fascinated about the next thing I will hear come out of their mouths. I am also increasingly aware of them ‘growing up’.

They are still to learn a lot of things about life and they will learn as time passes. One of the things they still have to learn are the little rhetorical phrases that Cathy and I say every now and then. One that I tend to use a lot is “its in your genes” or something related to the term “genes’ when we are seated around the table having a meal or just hanging out at home.

Each time I say it, my daughter Olivia would quickly respond (with a questioning look on her face) – “dad, I’m not wearing Jeans!”

Cathy and I would look at each other, doing our best not to break out in laughter. The certainty of her look with regards to her not wearing jeans and mocking my rather dumb statement (based on her facial expression) is priceless.

I have made various versions of that particular statement regarding ‘genes’ and each time Olivia would be the first one to correct me. My wife and I haven’t yet been caught laughing but I’m certain one day soon, we will.

It’s so cute, the ‘black and white’ view children have of the world at this age, which includes their progressive understanding of the English language and all it’s idiosyncrasies. I am looking forward to explaining to her and Zachary what I meant about the word ‘genes’ because at this present time, they only knows the word as ‘jeans’.

I’m looking forward to explaining the many ‘new’ things they will learn about life as they mature, through each phase of life. One of my roles as a parent (and every parent’s role) as I see it is to do my utmost to prepare my children for adulthood. It does not stop there, being a parent continues until the day I die.

Winning the NSW titles – one of the 3 times I won it.My signature winning pose at that time.

Over the weekend, my wife and I were getting our children ready for bed and my son, Zachary was being quite disruptive and being difficult. After repeated requests, I blurted out –

“Dad, Zach is not wearing socks to bed tonight, it’s too hot!”. She had that – “dad, you’re silly” look on her face again.

I expect that I will be seeing that face many more times in to the future, probably will expect to see quite a lot in her teenage years. I am looking forward to hearing her cute reminders to a silly dad.

This is one of the many ‘little daily miracles’ all of us who are lucky to be parents get to experience. Having children is truly a blessing, many times over.

I thank God and my beautiful wife Cathy, that I am able to pass on my genes on to the next generation – my children. I am sure she is appreciative too of the opportunity of passing on her genes to our children.

After all, the overall purpose of life is to procreate. To live on indefinitely or at least one more generation through your off-springs. It is surely an ‘off-set’ of our own mortality.

It gives us mortals – hope. A taste of immortality, even if most of it will be experienced through our imagination. Hope, however, is a beautiful thing and the very essence of it, of the belief summoned for it, allows some people the courage to continue to live.

Appropriate outfit given the Rugby World Cup currently under-way in England,Me and my two Australian Valentines.My 2 favourite teams are Fiji and Australia. As Fiji has not progressed to the quarter finals, Go the Australian Wallabies!

So, live. Love. Laugh. Hope. Live on through genes.

Reflect on YOU, your uniqueness. On your unique genes that has been passed on to you, that makes up who you are. Your blueprint. Ask yourself, have you allowed YOU – to be the BEST YOU CAN BE? Have you worked on your genetic strengths? Have you or are you working towards your potential? For example, would you say you “strongly agree” to the statement –

“At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best, every day”.

If not, why not?

If you answered ‘strongly disagree’ or ‘disagree’, the costs to you and your life could be staggering. There seems to be an epidemic of disengagement at work of a majority of people simply because they are not working to their strengths and not emotionally engaged on their job.

A lot of unhappy, unmotivated people.

This impacts greatly on the overall quality of your life. So, work towards your strengths – your genes and try to align your job and your goals with your natural talents. It’s never too late. Just ACT and build a strengths-based development plan for a better you. A better life.

The impetus for this, for any worthwhile change in life is DESIRE. You’ve got to desire the BEST YOU to step forward. You’ve got to fuel the desire, the hunger to be the BEST YOU CAN BE, using your God-given talents. The strength in your genes, that has been passed down to you from your ascendents.

Ask yourself – have these strengths, these talents laid dormant for a number of years? Time for a change. A change for your good, for the good of your life and those around you.

Be courageous – take action.

Food for thought.

This is my genes for jeans story.

If you’ve got this far, thank you. I hope you enjoyed the story-telling and found some value in it that you could use in your life. I wish you all the very best in your search for your best, now and in to the future.

Until next time,

Here we are … my beautiful wife and I.at a dinner party.

A semi-posing shot.Enjoying the sun and day out at my favourite beach here in Sydney , Australia.

I am sure most dads would do this for their daughter, too. But, we hope we never have to.

We have built a great relationship so far in her life and we enjoy our weekly “Daddy-daughter Day” time together, where there is no one else but her and I. We share each other’s company for part of a day. We just hang out. Sometimes, we say a lot, sometimes we don’t.

I cherish these moments.

I know I will miss these moments when she is all grown up and embracing her journey through adulthood. I hope it will take up a little special place in her memories of her time with me in time to come. I am looking forward to making more memories with her.

We all know that girls, as well as boys, can go ‘off-track’ in later years, without the right guidance at home. What a responsibility it is for us, parents. I believe it is probably the most important investment, apart from education, that we are blessed to have in our lives.

The best counselling services in the best institutions and schools seldom make up for a lack of guidance from a present, and good father and mother. Some families tackle this responsibility singularly (single-parent families) and I take my hat off to them as I think it is a little easier tackling this huge responsibility as a team.

A father and mother team.

I have learned (from my experience with my daughter and from what I have learned from the hundreds of parents I have met and helped over the last 20 years) that daughters want you be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the household on some matters only. All the other matters rests with the other co-CEO – her mother.

I believe it is important that daughters observe in her mother a wise, intelligent, caring woman who loves you, respects and can talk to you about all the important issues in the family. She needs to find comfort in a woman’s kind of wisdom and courage and patience in her mother …. That only a mother who tries, can provide.

I am blessed that my daughter’s mother, my beautiful wife – Cathy, is all this and much, much more. My daughter is blessed to have a mother like her, the woman I chose to spend the rest of my life with. Makes me very blessed too.

However, this blog is about daddies …. and daughters. What does she want to see in you – her dad? Well, I think your daughter would want to see in you an intelligent man’s viewpoint about life plus the ability to share the leading role of the household, with her mother in a life-affirming way. A fatherly way that is the essence for you.

Then, she can learn to love you as her father as well as a fine man … a fine, gentleman.

Dads reading this, remember – YOU ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT MAN IN HER YOUNG LIFE. I believe she ought to build her life according to what she sees in yours, or at the very least, give her a skeleton of a framework for her to build on (or subtract from). This can be done in a few areas:

Your wisdom – to withhold judgement until you have gathered all the facts, with emphasis on patience (which is lacking in the world today).

Your kindness – and care towards others who have not been able to get along in life due to no real fault of their own.

Your ability to forgive – those who have done wrong, seeing this forgiving energy flow freely without the need to hold grudges. She needs to see you rise to a higher consciousness level.

Your courage – to face seemingly impossible odds and the power of your belief and unwavering faith.

Your uncommon sense – uncommon because ‘common sense’ does not seem common any more. It is an hybrid of all these traits and more.

All these facets of being a dad rests with you, it rests in you. No one else can demonstrate this any better than you can. You need to show this in your actions. If, and this is a big if, IF you put your mind to it and you give it a go.

Her mother can show her all the traits of a fine woman and she can replicate it for her young adult life but you, the father, the daddy, is the proto-type of what her ‘man’ is.

Your example of what a good man is like, will be priceless to her …. Even if you sing off tune in the car every now and then or have the accidental fart leak out that would make even skunks run for air.

Tell her when you make a mistake, that every good superhero is a little flawed. Tell her that you are a flawed superhero and that you learn from your mistakes. Tell her that you grow the most through your mistakes, your failures. Show her how not to fear, failure. Tell her that you succeed through failure. Tell her that you’re a constant ‘work-in-progress’ but that you will always do and be YOUR BEST for her.

Just because you love her.

Being a good dad is fun. Being a great dad is a challenge. Being a dad is a blessing. Do the very best you can … and cherish those “daddy … daughter” moments.

It’s these moments that you will take with you in to the next realm when you depart this life. Your soul will carry it away … when you’re gone, but you can hope that these moments will remain in the heart and memories of your daughter(s).

That hopefully, will remind her (when everyone else forgets), that you were once here and walked this planet with her.

Until next time,

Zachary and Olivia with their good friend – Ruby. They just adore one another.